A'ME — Aeromarine Molding and Engineering, and the Triangle That Signed 1980s BMX

Legend Bike Co · BMX heritage series

Some parts date a bike. A'ME grips brand it. The raised-and-lowered triangle tread reads across a room, across a photograph, across forty years, and if you grew up around BMX in the 1980s you can probably still feel the flange against the heel of your hand. What most people do not know is that the company behind it started out molding plastic parts for airplanes, that the name is an acronym nobody says out loud anymore, and that the grip that came on your bike from the factory was probably not the one you think.

An acronym from the aircraft business

A'ME stands for Aeromarine Molding and Engineering. Three independent sources give the same expansion, and it explains the company's odd origin: before it was a BMX brand, it was a shop making injection-molded plastic parts for aircraft. It was founded in 1974 and incorporated in January 1975 as A'ME Manufacturing, Inc.

A'ME's own site names Phil Downey and Bob Paley as the founders. That is a single source — the company's own page — and no filing or period document corroborates it, so we are attributing rather than asserting. What the company describes at that same moment is a small plastics shop with new tooling technology looking for a market, which is exactly the sort of business that was well placed when BMX arrived.

By 1981 the operation was serious enough that Chuck Robinson of Robinson Racing toured the A'ME factory and came away describing a high-tech operation — one that was also molding aerosol nozzles alongside the grips. That is a small detail that says a lot: A'ME was a molding company that sold grips, not a grip company that happened to mold.

Why the triangle is a period signature

Three things put A'ME on 1980s BMX bikes and keep it in the memory.

The tread. The raised-and-lowered triangle pattern is the visual tell, and it carries across the Tri, the Uni-Tron and the Dual. A'ME describes it as a no-slip surface wet or dry, and treats the triangle as its house mark to this day.

The colors. The two-tone naming convention — one color over another — is period-accurate and the range was enormous. The Uni-Tron alone runs to twenty-nine two-tone combinations in current production: fluorescent green over white, Maui blue over white, teal over yellow, lavender over white, red over yellow. The Dual runs twenty-four. That palette is 1986 in a box.

The race presence. This is the part that bought the association, and it is well documented. A'ME's name went on the front of ABA nationals for at least four straight years:

• October 1980 — the A'me/ABA $5,000 Pro Spectacular, Amarillo, Texas.
• June 1981 — the A'me-Premier/ABA Winternationals, Chandler, Arizona.
• July 1981 — the DG-A'me/ABA Gator Nationals, Brandon, Florida.
• May 1982 — the A'me/ABA Winternationals.
• June 1983 — the A'me-ABA Winternational, Chandler, where Greg Hill won Pro.
• June 1984 — the A'ME Winternationals.

A'ME also ran an A'ME Test Team of, by the company's count, fifteen or so high-profile racers, memorialized in a Dale Davis caricature poster. One caution about that poster: the bike brands drawn on it — Cook Bros, JMC, Vans, Haro, GT, Schwinn, CW, Robinson, Pro-Neck, Huffy, Patterson, Torker — are the riders' bike sponsors, not A'ME sponsorships. Do not read the poster as a list of companies A'ME backed.

The models

The Tri

The flagship, and the grip most people mean when they say A'ME. Triangle tread, oversized flange, large end cap, Vulcathane compound. Current production runs about 4.2 ounces the pair-weight measure, roughly 30 millimeters mounted diameter, 125 millimeters end to end with a 109 millimeter hand area, on 7/8 inch bars.

The introduction date is contested and should not be stated flatly. A'ME says the Tri was originally launched in 1980. A collector forum reports the Tri's introduction advertisement running in Super BMX in July 1981 — first-generation logo, before the bubble font, no holes in the ends — which is the most specific claim of the three, though we could not open the source directly to verify it. A third recollection puts the Tri at 1983, which sits badly against the other two. The fair reading is a 1980 to 1981 introduction with the advertising campaign running in mid-1981.

The Round

Introduced in 1981, and the one nobody talks about — which is odd, because the Round is the A'ME grip that actually came on the bikes. See the spec list below.

The Dual

The dual-compound grip with the classic flange. Current production bonds a soft Thermo-Flo rubber sleeve to a dual-compound base, carrying the same triangle pattern, at around 3.0 ounces and 122 millimeters end to end.

Period first-generation Duals are catalogued by collectors as a genuine two-piece design with the earlier bubble-font logo. The consensus, unverified, is that the early Duals were a true sleeved assembly and that later production moved to a single grip molded in two colors. No period advertisement or dated citation for the Dual was located, so its introduction year is genuinely open.

The Uni-Tron

Triangle tread, oversized flange, the iconic end cap, and a dual-compound construction with an internal sleeve. Noticeably longer than the Tri at around 132 millimeters end to end.

Its date is a mess: the company says 1980, a reference site says 1985, and a forum member reports holding a Uni-Tron advertisement in a late-1983 magazine. We are flagging the conflict rather than picking a winner. Worth noting that the company's "1980" appears on both the Tri and the Uni-Tron pages, which suggests house boilerplate rather than a model-specific date.

Cam, Mini and Fini

The Cam is real and still made — slots cut into the grip body to reduce weight and give a cushioned feel, on an oversized flange with a large end cap. The company dates it only to "the 1980s." The Mini is a smaller grip on the round pattern. The Fini is confirmed as a period model by a product probe in BMX Plus! in May 1982; it does not appear in the collector reference list or in the current catalog.

One correction. There is no A'ME "Camo" model in any source we reached. The reference lists Cam, and the company sells Cam Grips. If you have seen "Camo" written somewhere, it is a misreading.

On the gate — and the Round is the surprise

Factory catalog spec tables put A'ME on two of the biggest names in freestyle, for years at a stretch:

• GT Performer, Pro Performer and Pro Series, 1986 — grips listed as A'ME Round, with the Performer's catalog copy calling out genuine A'me grips by name.
• GT Performer and Pro Performer, 1987 — A'ME Round.
• GT Performer and Pro Performer, 1988 — A'ME Round.
• Haro Master and Haro Sport, 1986 — grips listed as A'ME.
• Haro Master and Haro Sport, 1987 — A'ME.

The headline is the model name. The OEM grip was the Round, not the Tri. The Tri was the grip riders bought; the Round was the grip the factory bolted on. Two different products, two different jobs, and a distinction almost nobody makes when they talk about A'ME today.

That is a genuinely different position from the one ODI and Grab On occupied in the same market. Both of those brands sold hard to riders and, on the evidence available, almost never to factories. A'ME did both.

The caveat. Those spec tables come from a modern reproduction of factory catalogs, not from scanned catalogs or period magazine bike tests. We could not corroborate them against period print, because the main archive of scanned BMX magazines stores its bike tests as image-only PDFs with no searchable text layer.

A bigger claim we could not confirm

A user-submitted collector reference entry states that A'ME molded grips for GT under GT branding, and that A'ME produced the Oakley BMX grips — the B-2, the B1B and the O'Wings. If that holds, A'ME's fingerprints are on far more 1980s bikes than the A'ME-branded ones, including many of the spec sheets that look like negative findings on our ODI and Grab On pages. It is a single, uncorroborated source. We are putting it on the page as a lead worth chasing, clearly labelled, not as a fact.

Related and equally unverified: forum reporting holds that the 1988 GT/A'ME flangeless grips used a thermoplastic elastomer around 35 to 40 Shore A, ran on the 1988 GT Pro Performer, Pro Freestyle Tour, PFT TM and the Dyno Compe, Pro Compe and TM, and were molded from the same tooling into the mid-1990s.

Still here

A'ME trades today from Las Vegas, Nevada, under parent company Gripos, with a live store, a dealer program and a catalog of twenty-plus BMX grip families — the Tri, Round, Mini, Dual, Uni-Tron, Cam and 702 alongside newer Full Waffle, Super Tri, Zone, Super Soft and lock-on models — plus mountain bike, motorcycle, ATV and heated grips. Everything is made in the United States from United States materials, per the company.

On whether that is the same company: the evidence points to continuity rather than a badge revival. Same brand, same Tri lineage, and personnel continuity — A'ME's own about page carries a first-person account from a long-serving employee who joined as a machine operator under Downey and Paley, moved through tooling and machining to general manager and then marketing director, and puts his time with the company at about forty-five years. That is not the profile of a name bought out of a bankruptcy.

What is not proven is the paperwork. We found no corporate filing, sale announcement or trademark assignment documenting the path from A'ME Manufacturing, Inc. in 1975 to Gripos in Nevada, and no date for the move to Nevada. Whether Gripos represents a change of ownership, a holding-company restructure or simply a rename is not established. The brand, the tooling and the people appear to have carried straight through; the corporate record just is not public.

In the Legend Bike Co. store

We carry both of the grips this page is about. The A'me Tri Grips are the flagship triangle-tread grip described above. The A'ME Dual BMX Grips — Dual Compound, Classic Flange are the dual-compound version with the classic flange and end cap — in stock, but not currently listed on the site, so ask us.

Timeline

• 1974 A'ME founded — Aeromarine Molding and Engineering — to design, develop, manufacture and market injection-molded products.
• 1975 Incorporated in January and renamed A'ME Manufacturing, Inc.
• 1980 The A'me/ABA $5,000 Pro Spectacular runs at Amarillo, Texas in October — the earliest A'ME-titled national we can date. The company dates the Tri's launch to this year.
• 1981 The Round is introduced. Chuck Robinson tours the A'ME factory. The A'me-Premier/ABA Winternationals run in June and the DG-A'me/ABA Gator Nationals in July. The Tri introduction advertisement is reported in Super BMX in July.
• 1982 The A'me/ABA Winternationals in May. BMX Plus! runs a product probe on the A'ME Fini in the same month.
• 1983 The A'me-ABA Winternational at Chandler, Arizona in June — Greg Hill wins Pro.
• 1984 The A'ME Winternationals in June — the last A'ME-titled ABA national we could date.
• 1985 One reference dates the Uni-Tron to this year; the company says 1980. Unresolved.
• 1986–88 GT specs A'ME Round grips on the Performer, Pro Performer and Pro Series; Haro specs A'ME on the Master and Sport in 1986 and 1987.
• 1987 A'me appears in BMX Action's November Equipment Guide alongside Boss, Diamond Back, Odyssey, Hutch, GT, Robinson, Dyno, Visage, Skyway, Tioga and Haro.
• Today A'ME operates from Las Vegas, Nevada under parent company Gripos, still making the Tri, the Round, the Dual, the Uni-Tron and the Cam, still manufacturing in the United States.

Sources

amegrips.com — the corporate statement (Aeromarine Molding and Engineering, 1974 founding, January 1975 incorporation), the About page (founders Phil Downey and Bob Paley, the Dale Davis Test Team poster, Vulcathane, the Gripos parent relationship, the forty-five-year employee account), the Tri, Uni-Tron, Dual and Cam product pages (current specifications, colorways and the company's own launch dates), the current BMX range, and the Las Vegas address. 23mag.com, A'ME company page — the acronym, the 1974 and January 1975 dates, the Round at 1981, the Uni Tron at 1985, and the Chuck Robinson factory-visit recollection. 23mag.com magazine issue indexes for BMX Action 1980, 1982, 1983 and 1987 and BMX Plus! 1981, 1982 and 1984 — the source for every dated ABA national and for the May 1982 Fini product probe. bmxmuseum.com reference 839 — the six-model period list: Round, Uni-Tron, Tri, Dual, Cam, Mini. bmxmuseum.com reference 828 — the first-generation two-piece Dual with bubble font, the Gripos parent note, and the uncorroborated claim that A'ME molded GT-branded and Oakley BMX grips. bmxmuseum.com forum thread 371339 — the A'ME grip timeline discussion. bmx-catalogue.com — original catalog spec rows for the 1986, 1987 and 1988 GT Performer, Pro Performer and Pro Series and the 1986 and 1987 Haro Master and Sport; note this is a modern reproduction of factory catalogs, not period scans. Attempted and unavailable: bmxsociety.com (the July 1981 Super BMX Tri advertisement thread would not load on any protocol; it is cited here from a search index snippet only, and is not in the Wayback Machine), oldschoolmags.com bike-test PDFs (image-only scans, no text layer, no spec panel read first-hand).

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